"Despite the documented evidence of chess historian H.J.R. Murray, I have always thought that chess was invented by a goddess."
George Koltonowski, from Women in Chess, Players of the Modern Game

Thursday, February 3, 2011

China Demands Removal of Artifacts from Silk Road Exhibit...

The "Beauty of Xiaohe". Image from Penn Current.
Buried circa 1800 BCE, one of approximately
500 mummies excavated in the Tarim Basin
over the past 40 years.

...that it had agreed to be exhibited in the ground-breaking exhibition. No explanation was given for their demands. The host museum (the Penn, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) complied with the demands and have withdrawn two Tarim Basin mummies from the exhibit (they would have been a HUGE draw), along with some 100 rare artifacts never before seen outside of China. Evidently China has thrown another hissy fit for reasons that only it knows (but we can make some educated surmises). The Penn people aren't talking. What was to be a block-buster exhibit that presold thousands of tickets will now have that money refunded and a much reduced exhibit, with photos of the missing mummies and artifacts, offered instead. The reduced exhibit will be open to all visitors ot the museum who pay its general admission. The exhibit - with mummies and artifacts - has already been viewed at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, California and the Houston Museum of Natural Science before the final exhibit at the Penn Museum.

Some possible hints about why the artifacts and mummies were pulled at the last second by the Chinese government (who conveniently turn blind eyes to the concepts of "contract" and "rule of law") may be found in this article at the Los Angeles Times:

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"Advanced Chess" Leon 2002

About Me

I'm one of the founders of Goddesschess, which went online May 6, 1999. I earned an under-graduate degree in history and economics going to college part-time nights, weekends and summer school while working full-time, and went on to earn a post-graduate degree (J.D.) I love the challenge of research, and spend my spare time reading and writing about my favorite subjects, travelling and working in my gardens. My family and my friends are most important in my life. For the second half of my life, I'm focusing on "doable" things to help local chess initiatives, starting in my own home town. And I'm experiencing a sort of personal "Renaissance" that is leaving me rather breathless...